May 16 2007
Strange locution of Airtel’s IVR bill payment system
I am a generally happy Airtel customer. I’ve used their landline, broadband, and mobile services for a couple of years now and I’m always happy to report Airtel generally as a world class customer experience - especially at those times when broadband woes strike in the middle of the night. I would rate my experience with Airtel’s call center agents higher than with any of their counterparts in the financial services industry (Citibank take note).
However, there is one interesting and somewhat perplexing feature of Airtel’s Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system for phone based bill payments (using credit cards) that is disconcerting. And its not only the booming voice, a point well noted by Shruti Bhandari in her blog post. It is the cognitive dissonance caused by listening to a Frankenstein voice - one mixed with distinctly Western, North Indian and South Indian English accents. Now the individual voices are in themselves not a problem. What causes my hair to stand on end is that the voice which validates your 16 digit number or phone number alternates between the Western sounding and Indian sounding voice. Imagine hearing 3 being read in a stern Western tone and 7 being read in a soft South Indian tone. By the time the entire number is read out, I have to say “creepy…”
I wonder how Airtel missed this. The booming mixed-locution voice almost sounds like Airtel picked up a few Western style number intonations from an old IVR system, got one of their agents to record the other numbers, and then cobbled the whole thing together with some duct tape.
That strange locution apart, I love the IVR - saves me and them the trouble of hunting for each other when its bill payment time every month.
That said, why doesn’t India’s fledgling technology products and services industry pay more attention to these simple aspects of consumer experience? Anybody remember the nightmare of dialing the Indian Railways number (139) and having to dial about fifty times before someone actually picks up the phone…..
Cross posting my comment to your comment here ::
hmmm…
Also, point to be noted is no one takes advantage of acquired knowledge. Acquired knowledge of the messages which are going to be followed that is. I don’t need to be thanked every time I make a selection, I don’t need to know their website’s URL after every 20 seconds and I don’t need to know how happy I have made them by calling them.
At least, not when I am calling them 50th time. They should handle new and repeat customers separately. There should also be abridged and full flowery versions of the IVR. I am not talking from frustration’s point of view but usability’s point of view.
Why club features when no one is gonna use them?